Instant Expert: the Return of Swine Flu
The Big Question: How many people will it infect this year? Flu season in the Southern Hemisphere is almost over—and now it’s heading back our way. At the time this issue went to press, there were more than 162,000 confirmed cases and 1,154 deaths worldwide from “novel H1N1,” a.k.a. swine flu, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes this figure is a gross underestimate, especially since only a fraction of people who have the flu go to the hospital. Now that the Northern Hemisphere is entering flu season, scientists fear that the virus may come back with a vengeance, compounding the impact of conventional flu, which alone kills about 36,000 people in the U.S. annually. The trouble is that this H1N1 is so genetically different from traditional flu strains that our bodies have few defenses against it and ordinary flu vaccines are useless....